These are the current lawsuits against generative A.I. companies, mostly for the use of copyrighted work in training data. I attend hearings whenever possible and I’ve written about the general legal situation for The Atlantic.
Last update: Aug 20, 2024
Andersen v. Stability AI, Midjourney, Runway, DeviantArt (ND California) filed Jan 13, 2023. Use of art (LAION-5B, LAION-400M) to train diffusion models (Stable Diffusion, Midjourney).
Zhang v. Google (ND California) filed Apr 26, 2024. Use of art (LAION-400M) to train diffusion model (Imagen).
Tremblay v. OpenAI (ND California) filed Jun 28, 2023. Use of books (Books3) to train LLM (ChatGPT).
Kadrey v. Meta (ND California) filed Jul 7, 2023. Use of books (Books3) to train LLM (Llama).
Silverman v. OpenAI (ND California) filed Jul 7, 2023. Use of books (Books3) to train LLM (ChatGPT). Consolidated with Tremblay v. OpenAI.
Chabon v. OpenAI (ND California) filed Sep 8, 2023. Use of books (Books3) to train LLM (ChatGPT). Consolidated with Tremblay v. OpenAI.
Chabon v. Meta (ND California) filed Sep 12, 2023. Use of books (Books3) to train LLM (Llama). Consolidated with Kadrey v. Meta.
Authors Guild v. OpenAI (SD New York) filed Sep 19, 2023. Use of books (Books3) to train LLM (ChatGPT).
Huckabee v. Meta, Microsoft, Bloomberg, EleutherAI (SD New York) filed Oct 17, 2023. Use of books (Books3) to train LLMs (Llama, BloombergGPT). Case against EleutherAI was voluntarily dismissed Dec 26, 2023.
Alter v. OpenAI, Microsoft (SD New York) filed Nov 21, 2023. Use of books (BooksCorpus) to train LLM (ChatGPT). Consolidated with Authors Guild v. OpenAI.
Basbanes v. Microsoft, OpenAI (SD New York) filed Jan 5, 2024. Use of nonfiction books (Books3) to train LLM (ChatGPT). Consolidated with Authors Guild v. OpenAI.
O’Nan v. Databricks (ND California) filed Mar 8, 2024. Use of books (Books3) to train LLM (MPT).
Nazemian v. NVIDIA (ND California) filed Mar 8, 2024. Use of books (Books3) to train LLM (NeMo Megatron–GPT).
Dubus v. NVIDIA (ND California) filed May 2, 2024. Use of books (Books3) to train LLM (NeMo Megatron–GPT).
Bartz v. Anthropic (ND California) filed Aug 19, 2024. Use of books (Books3) to train LLM (Claude).
Getty Images v. Stability AI (Delaware) filed Feb 3, 2023. Use of images to train diffusion model (Stable Diffusion).
New York Times v. Microsoft (SD New York) filed Dec 27, 2023. Use of news articles to train LLM (ChatGPT). Complaint shows memorization of plaintiff’s work.
The Intercept v. OpenAI (SD New York) filed Feb 28, 2024. Use of news articles (WebText, WebText2, Common Crawl) to train LLM (ChatGPT).
Raw Story Media v. OpenAI (SD New York) filed Feb 28, 2024. Use of news articles (WebText, WebText2, Common Crawl) to train LLM (ChatGPT).
Daily News v. Microsoft (SD New York) filed Apr 30, 2024.
Center for Investigative Reporting v. OpenAI (SD New York) filed Jun 27, 2024. Use of news articles (WebText and WebText2) to train LLM (ChatGPT).
Universal Music Group v. Anthropic (ND California) filed Oct 18, 2023. Use of song lyrics to train LLM (Claude). Complaint shows memorization of plaintiff’s work.
RIAA v. Suno and Udio (SD New York) filed Jun 24, 2024. Use of songs to train audio-generating models.
These are cases that contribute to modern interpretations of fair use. Opinions vary on their relevance to training generative A.I. models.
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (Supreme Court, Leval) decided 1994. 2 Live Crew’s parody of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman”. The court ruled that copying lyrics for parody is fair use.
A. V. v. iParadigms (ED Virginia, Traxler) decided April 16, 2009. Use of copyrighted work to create plagiarism detection software (TurnItIn.com). The court ruled that the software didn’t distribute the original copyrighted expression in a way that was damaging to its creators.
Authors Guild v. Google (Supreme Court, Leval) decided Oct 16, 2015. Scanning millions of library books to build Google Books. The court ruled it was fair for Google to display statistical information about the books and to display short snippets in a carefully controlled way that would not damage sales.
Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith (Supreme Court, Roberts) decided May 2023. Creation of a stylized print (by Warhol) based on a photograph (by Goldsmith). The court ruled the print was not fair use since it could potentially be licensed for the same purposes as the photograph. Warhol was depriving Goldsmith of licensing opportunities.
Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence (Delaware) filed May 6, 2020. Scraping a paywalled legal database to train an LLM that helps with legal research.
Thaler v. Perlmutter (Washington DC) filed Jun 2, 2022. USCO’s refusal to grant copyright for artwork created with AI.
Meta v. Bright Data (ND California) filed Jan 6, 2023. Scraping Facebook and selling the data. Court ruled for Bright Data in Jan 2024 and Meta dropped the case.
X Corp. v. Bright Data (ND California) filed Jul 26, 2023. Scraping Twitter/X and selling the data. Court dismissed X’s complaint on May 9, 2024.
P.M. v. OpenAI, Microsoft (ND California) filed Jun 28, 2023. Various concerns about privacy. Dismissed Sep 2023.
J. L. v. Alphabet (ND California) filed Jul 11, 2023. Various concerns about privacy and unfair competition.
Cengage Learning v. Does 1-50 (SD New York) filed Sep 14, 2023. Distribution of pirated e-books (Library Genesis).
Cengage Learning v. Google (SD New York) filed Jun 5, 2024. Advertising pirated e-books and rejecting ads for legitimate ones.